


give me a sign

by sirona



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: #coulsonlives, Age Difference, Angst, Clint's life ladies and gents, Clint's life with SHIELD, Competence Kink, Don't Touch Lola, F/M, FIx It, Fury is a dick, Geekery, Level 7, M/M, Phil Coulson appreciation, Pining, Protective Phil Coulson, Team, The Avengers aftermath, early years, long haul - Freeform, more pirate jokes than you can shake a stick at, sarcasm appreciation, so much swearing god Clint, temporary perceived character death, the longest get together ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:24:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirona/pseuds/sirona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pertaining to the question of how Clint found (or, rather, was found) by SHIELD, and what happened next. Including star performances by Agent Asshole, Dread Pirate Fury, and Lola, this is the story of Clint Barton, pre- and post-Battle of New York, as well as of clearing up certain deliberate misinformation and clearance levels misunderstandings. Oh, and it's a love story, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	give me a sign

**Author's Note:**

> This story started life months ago as me toying with how Clint might have found his way into SHIELD. Then _Agents of SHIELD_ happened last week, and hey presto, this poured out of me and onto the page. It's basically all I wanted to read post-premiere. :D This show is going to be the death of me. Also, good lord, this is going to get Jossed SO FAST, and I don't even care. :')
> 
> A million thanks to Foxxcub and Pollyrepeat for being _wonderful_ cheerleaders and putting up with me spamming their inboxes/lives with this story. Also thank you to Polly for the title suggestion. :D
> 
> **Warning:** I have played _so_ fast and loose with timelines, oh my GOD, I'm sorry. Clint is only sixteen here when SHIELD first brings him in. Clint's birth date courtesy of SHIELD's MCU agent files.
> 
> There is also quite an age difference between Phil and Clint -- at least fifteen years (although nothing untoward happens while Clint is underage). Please bear that in mind in re: your self-care as you proceed.

Phil Coulson, Clint Barton decides within ten seconds of meeting him, is an asshole. 

Of course, at that time, Clint has no idea who the old dude sliding into the booth across from him, completely uninvited and also apparently immune to Clint's best death glare, is. He's wearing pilot shades _inside_ , like an _asshole_ , because that's what he _is_ , and his suit costs more money than Clint has seen in one place _in his life_. Clint immediately classifies him as the next rich white dickhead to try to--

\--Uh. The part of him that he tends to pile vast amounts of crap into to keep hidden, chooses now to wake up and poke him in the brain. 'Rich' and 'asshole' the guy might be, but Clint does not get a skeezy john vibe off of him at all; for a start, the dude hasn't even cracked a smile, let alone eyed Clint up like he wants to eat him (or vice versa). (That other part of him, the one that is well aware that he's a sixteen-year-old guy who gets hot at the mere thought of competent-looking men close to twice his age, sullenly demands to know _why the hell not_.) He also doesn't look like a hustler, or a white slave trader, or a drug dealer, or any other school awareness stereotype that Clint has managed to retain. Clint can't deny he's...intrigued.

The man watches him impassively for another long, long minute before his mouth twists in something between amusement and what looks suspiciously like disappointment. Clint spends that time defiantly eating his burger and fries, refusing to let the guy see him squirm and magnanimously not punching him in the face as that last expression registers. 

The dude sighs at last; the urge to punch him increases exponentially when he shakes his head before reaching up to remove his shades, revealing the prettiest fucking blue eyes Clint has ever seen.

He blames staring at them in self-sabotaging fascination for his distraction. That's his story and he's sticking to it. Possibly all the way to a juvie cell, because then the dude opens his mouth and says, in a voice that's the blandest of bland, "Mister Barton, I'm here to talk to you about last Wednesday night -- specifically, the events that transpired in the alleyway behind Big Joe's Billiards Hall."

The remains of the burger fall from Clint's suddenly nerveless fingers. He sizes up the guy again, perspective shifting rapidly to a tune of "Oh, fucking _fuck_ " playing on repeat in his head. 

"I would advise against it," the suit says, but by that time Clint is already halfway out of the door of the diner, cursing his rotten luck. He thinks he hears another sigh behind him, but by then he's legging it down the nearest shortcut between dark red brick buildings and only has the energy to focus on speeding up. A cop. A fucking _cop_ , and he'd been so careful; none of the thugs had seen him, he was sure, he'd _been_ sure, why is this his fucking _life_.

He turns the corner again, thoughts on how to make it across town to the little corner he'd chiselled out for himself in an abandoned building, when he comes to an abrupt and unwelcome stop courtesy of a chest three times the size of his, which he runs full-tilt into. The fucker doesn't even sway, what is this shit. Rattled, Clint does the only thing that comes to mind -- he ducks the guy's outstretched arm and pushes himself off the wall, quickly scaling the side of the building to his right.

"Hey, come back here," the guy shouts. Clint is even more incensed when he catches the amused note in the guy's voice. He'll teach them to think of him as some cute kid. 

He's through the first open window he comes to and out of the other side of the apartment before the elderly lady can do more than open her mouth. He grins at her and winks reassuringly -- he hates scaring old people, and he really is only passing through; besides, not too many people could make it into this place through the narrow window without specialised equipment. The lady will be fine. 

"Thanks," he hollers breathlessly, and is rewarded by a smothered chuckle for his trouble.

Out through the window at the end of the hall, jump across to the fire escape the next building over, shimmy down the wall opposite his entry point, and Clint tucks his hands into his pockets and starts humming cheerfully as he turns onto the street round the next corner, good mood restored.

"Mister Barton."

_God-fucking-damn it._

Being prevented from making it away by a hand clenched tight into the neck of his sweatshirt is just fucking undignified, and only serves to make him madder. The suit has one hell of a grip, Clint realises when he can't even wriggle out of the top to shed it like an old skin. 

"What the fuck do you want with me?" Clint growls as he struggles (because he is sure as hell not going to go along quietly). 

"Language, Mister Barton," the suit says, and Clint is so startled that he actually stops and stares for a second. No one else in his life has ever cared enough to correct him, let alone with words instead of a slap around the head -- even if the guy's probably only doing it to be an asshole. 

A second is apparently all the suit needs. Before Clint knows what's happening, there's a black, nondescript car pulling over to the curb and he is being manoeuvred inside with nothing more than a few deft touches. Suit slides in next to him, seemingly unbothered by the way Clint scoots away and curls up in the opposite corner, next to the (locked, _damn it_ ) door. The car peels off as soon as the suit pulls the door shut behind him. 

Clint watches buildings and streets pass by sedately, and dares to throw a curious, covert look or five at his unwanted companion. 

"Where are you taking me?" he gives in and demands when the churn of dread in his gut gets unbearable. 

The suit turns to look at him with this weird fucking half-smile on his otherwise blank face. "The regional office of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Which you'd know, if you'd let me introduce myself before rabbiting."

Clint might be in the deepest shit he can conceive of, but nothing short of a gun barrel to the back of his neck is going to stop him being a smartass -- and even then, he has his doubts. "That's a mouthful, and I'd know," he says, leering at Agent Suit, who disappoints him by looking completely unruffled and decidedly unimpressed. 

"Yeah, we get that a lot," he says calmly. "We go by SHIELD for those with the clearance to know about us. I'm Agent Coulson. I'm taking you to see the Director, who has expressed interest in you and your...specialised skills."

Clint sits up and takes notice at that, because while he is, of course, pretty awesome all round, there can be only one reason a director of a mouthful agency would be interested in him.

Still. Be smarter to play dumb until he knows more. 

"Oh yeah? It must be my super-charming personality and stunning good looks."

"He didn't say," Agent Asshole says, a certain note in his voice eloquent enough to convey that pigs might fly first, even though Clint would be hard-pressed to explain what exactly makes him think that.

The rest of the ride passes in silence, and Clint chooses to focus on the good news that he hasn't been cuffed or read his rights yet. Of course, that might mean he's actually in _way_ more trouble than he supposes, but despite the crap storm that has been his life so far, Clint has somehow managed to remain an optimist. 

It's probably a good thing he couldn't have possibly known to imagine Director Nick Fury, because if he had, there is _no way_ he wouldn't have tried to run away as soon as the car stopped again. Guy is _terrifying_ , with his glare of certain death and his black leather everything, even behind a vast desk piled with paperwork and a nice silver picture frame next to the sleekest machine Clint has yet to see. Huh. Whatever else, SHIELD apparently does not skimp on technology. 

Fury sighs, the first, of many, _many_ heartily disappointed sighs Clint will hear from him in the coming years. It brings Clint's attention snapping back to him as if on a string.

"You sure this is the guy?" Fury says in this bored, suspicious voice that has Clint bristling immediately. Clint decides then and there that the entirety of SHIELD is made up of _dicks_.

"Yes, boss," Agent Hugo Boss says evenly. "Found him right where intel said he'd be. Fast, too, almost slipped us." He smiles at the 'almost'. Clint _hates. Him._

Fury eyes him up and down with a look like a fucking blowtorch, slow and methodical like he's already planning where to hide Clint's body parts and what patch on the wall to paper with his skin. Clint tries not to wither on the spot -- or worse, hide behind Coulson's shockingly wide shoulders. That Clint has not noticed. At all.

"You think we can use him?" Fury says at last, shifting his gaze to Coulson for a brief moment before returning it to drilling through that spot on Clint's forehead, right between the eyes, that makes them water with the effort not to cross.

Clint scowls and folds his arms over his chest, pretending for all he's worth that the answer doesn't matter one bit to him.

Coulson, the bastard, doesn't even bother looking at him before he replies.

"He scaled a twelve-foot brick wall in nine-point-eight seconds. Granted, it wasn't especially well maintained, but that's still faster than a third of our agents manage on the assault course without some kind of equipment. He tied four of our mid-level agents in knots trying to follow him and apprehend him, _and_ he did it without allowing a single noise out of the ordinary. Even if that other thing is an over-exaggeration, and I'm reserving judgement until I see him in action, it's still impressive."

There's something funny happening in Clint's chest. It could be smugness or pride -- and it is a little bit of both, mixed up with a heavy doze of relief, but really, what it actually is (and they're going to have to torture him first if they ever want to get this out of him), is gratitude. Gratitude for someone finally _seeing_ him -- _him_ , Clint Barton, not his aim or his mouth or his attitude. He is damn fucking _good_ at being who he appears to be, but this guy somehow stripped all the bullshit away and saw the kid underneath who's chomping at the bit for a fucking _chance_ , just a chance to prove he's worth something, never mind how he came across his skills. 

Fury eyes him for another long minute, and then his shoulders jerk in an aborted shrug.

"Fine. You know the drill. Get him set up."

"Yes, boss," Coulson says easily, then turns to the side. "Come with me," he says, and really, Clint has no choice but to do as he says. It _rankles_.

Coulson leads him down three floors and along a corridor that looks only marginally more homey than the psychiatric ward Clint had once notably ended up in for 'observation' before busting the hell out of there and taking up on his own. Coulson opens the fourth door on the right and steps back. 

"This will be your home for the foreseeable future," he says while Clint gives in to the urge to nose around. It's not much, decent-sized room, pretty comfy-looking bed, a desk, couple of chairs, bookshelves. Considering the fact that all of Clint's earthly possessions are secured in the sports bag waiting patiently for him at the edge of the bed (the fact that it's _here_ and not in his hidey-hole makes Clint swiftly re-evaluate these people's competence levels), it's the height of luxury and more than he needs. 

Distractions depleted, he turns to Coulson and crosses his arms over his chest again. He scowls at the way Coulson's face does not shift an inch. 

"So now what? You're kidnapping me? Locking me up?"

"Nobody is going to harm you here, Mister Barton," Coulson says. The way he addresses him makes it sound like Coulson's placing Clint on the same level of respect as himself, which. It's surreal.

"You didn't answer my question," Clint points out. "Just because there's no pain involved doesn't mean you're not putting me in a cage. And what did One-Eye mean by 'you know the drill?' You done this before?"

Coulson hesitates before nodding to the chair at Clint's desk. "May I?" he says, shocking the hell out of Clint for the second time in as many hours. He doesn't know what to do with all this respect for his personal boundaries. He's just a runaway kid who only knows how to run his mouth. Well, and a few other things.

"Sure," he says, swallowing past his confusion. He forgoes the second chair in favour of testing the bed (it's a damn sight better than a mattress on the floor, that's for sure). He resists the urge to dive into his bag and check on his baby. He doesn't want to upend his entire life in front of Coulson to dig it out from its hiding place beneath layers of memory-soaked fabric. 

Coulson comes through the door, then, and lowers himself carefully into the seat.

"Standard practice," he says with a small twitch that Clint interprets as a shrug. "You bring someone into SHIELD, you're responsible for them. Feed them, walk them, get them set up. Draft a training regime, keep an eye on them, if they screw up it's your head, etcetera."

Clint narrows his eyes on him, working through what he's just been told. 

"So...you're bringing me in? As what, an agent?" He grins. Aw yisss, take _that_ , Pops, you fuckhead.

Coulson lifts an expressive eyebrow. "You're going to have to earn that title, Mister Barton, if indeed we decide to offer it to you. For now, you're a potential asset, here for suitability assessment. You'll be put through your paces for the next however long it takes, and at the end of it we'll reassess the results."

Clint scowls. "Why the fuck would I want to be part of your lame-ass agency anyway?"

Coulson doesn't blink at the slur. "Because we'll give you free board and all the food you can eat, and, Mister Barton, we'll treat you as a grown-up. You have skills we believe would be potentially useful for defending this country, and we've got all the security you can shake a stick at. Nobody is going to threaten you or beat you up, unless it's on the training mat; nobody is going to go out of their way to pick on you -- and if they do, you come to me, understand?"

Clint looks at Coulson then, and he has to work hard not to choke on his own spit or swallow his tongue. This is a very different person from the asshole Clint first met mere hours ago, or the calm, mild-mannered man Clint was slowly getting used to. _This_ bastard would fuck your shit up with no problem if you had the displaced confidence to even think about going up against him. 

Clint doesn't think he has met a more complicated man in his life.He glowers at the tiny voice in the back of his head that insists it is intriguing. Outwardly, he shrugs, trying not to look like he might be a little hard in his pants. Because he _isn't_ , and that's _final_.

No one ever accused him of having an ounce of self-preservation, and unlike the other assumptions Clint lives to throw back in people's faces, he has to admit that one's kind of true. Sure, he's a little worried about what might happen if he were to pass through this 'suitability assessment' bullshit and be found wanting, but--well, that's a long way off. He'll burn that bridge when he comes to it. He's got nothing else going on right at this second, and who knows? It might turn out to be fun, even if it is of the running and screaming variety. He could give this a go, stay a while, try to get used to being in one space for longer than a week tops, try to stop looking over his shoulder long enough to at least catch up on his sleep. Despite what his head tries to tell him, he… There's something inside him that trusts this guy. Not enough not to start figuring out escape routes the second his back is turned, but maybe enough not to immediately take them. It's a start.

Coulson looks at him for another moment, before he appears satisfied with what he sees and gets up to leave. Clint watches after him as he steps quietly out of the door, which clicks shut behind his broad back. The keys to it hang innocuously from the lock on the inside, mocking Clint's paranoia -- but also soothing it, just a little. The tiny, insignificant show of trust is -- well. Staggering, actually, to someone who has never known any.

Clint still doesn't know if he's going to stay. It's not a promise he can make just like that; there are too many variables, too many screwed-up things inside him that can flip this shit on him at any time. Too many times his trusting nature has turned around and bit him in the ass hard enough to scar.

But. He'd like to stay, if he can swing it. He hopes he can manage to hold onto this for as long as the going is good. He hopes he doesn't fall back on the habit of a fucking lifetime and cock this up just because nothing this good can possibly happen to a loser like him.

Just this once, he hopes this isn't too good to last.

\---

That was year one. 

By year three, Clint knows the layout of SHIELD's New York base like...well, like a thing he knows extremely very well. Everyone knows his name; everyone in the base has yelled at him at least once to stop singing pop songs at the top of his lungs from the ventilation system that had been the first thing he'd made his job to explore. (But seriously though, it's not his fault that no one else seems to have the same flawless taste in music as him; "Mr. Boombastic" is a _classic_ , okay.) 

By year three, he has made grown agents cry both with his Shooting Skillz ™ and his mom's chilli, something he knows how to make so well he is never going to get it scoured from his brain. By year three, he knows he only has to smile at Gladys in the canteen to get triple helpings of mac'n'cheese; Veronica in R&D is a fucking _goddess_ with any kind of obscure projectile weapon; and Agent James is out and proud and will still hand you your ass in the sparring ring without breaking a sweat, _twice_ (they bond. Clint can't help it, James is the first gay man who doesn't mind being asked the tough questions, and will be brutally honest about the answers). Clint would have a crush on him the size of Kansas, if it wasn't for, well.

By year three, he has had it brought to his attention (several times, quite painfully for two of those) that he...might have been wrong about Agent Hugo Boss. Oh, he's still a grade-A asshole; he takes precisely _zero_ shit from anyone, even Dread Pirate Fury, has the driest sense of humour Clint has ever been subjected to, and will come down on you like a ton of bricks if he thinks you're endangering his people (painful cause number one of Clint's hard-earned buying a clue. High school is at least a seventh circle of hell, and he'd had to endure _a whole year of it_ when Coulson had thought he was getting too cocky for his shoes.

Even if it _was_ Professor Xavier's Academy, who'd made an exception by taking Clint in and drilling some knowledge into him in between training, and even if Clint did, grudgingly, have a fucking _blast_ going there. His point stands, and that point had been to not talk to Coulson for a whole month in retaliation. He'd reported to Junior Agent May for the duration of the 'punishment' -- who's just as _fucking badass_ as Agent James, and Clint would be in love with her if it weren't for....see above.

The first time Clint thought longingly of Coulson's deadpan snark and reassuring steadiness, he'd gone running in a panic to Professor X begging to be checked for Stockholm Syndrome, which they'd covered in class last week. The Prof had been very calm -- and very amused, but in a nice way, which Clint still thinks is a superpower all by itself. When Clint had gone online to report to Melinda May, he'd found himself looking at the top of Coulson's head instead. He'd suspected backhandedness being involved -- and he'd been _right_ , because Coulson had looked up and said, "I was told you missed me," and had the gall to let Clint see him laugh for the first time at Clint's horrified face.

Coulson had looked embarrassed, after, like he hadn't meant for Clint to see that, and Clint had been assaulted by the sudden realisation that it was _true_. He _did_ miss Agent Asshole. Missed him enough to stumble over his words while he watched Coulson's right index finger tap absently over the pile of paperwork that had accumulated on his desk. It was long and strong and the nail was smooth and rounded and _what the hell was wrong with him??_ This was _not_ the kind of thing Clint made a habit of noticing.

"Been slacking?" Clint had asked, jerking his chin at the files. He'd felt thrown and wrong-footed, his face flaming, which were all things he _hated_ , and the only way to keep Coulson from noticing his complete lack of a poker face had been to goad him until he snapped and terminated the call. Clint _had not_ allowed the spike of disappointment at the thought to even register, because that way madness lay.

Coulson had looked at him levelly, like he could tell just how full of shit Clint was by looking at him (he probably could, too. Shit).

"As it happens, Barton, my productivity has gone up four hundred percent now that I don't have you breaking my concentration every two minutes."

Clint's stomach had lurched painfully. "Aww, Coulson, you miss me, admit it," he'd drawled, praying it had not been as obvious to Coulson as it felt to him that...that one kinda hurt a lot.

Coulson had treated him to his stare that promised pain, lots of pain (that Clint had kinda become immune to by then from how often he'd gotten it levelled at him) for a few long, _long_ moments, before, to Clint's shock his mask had cracked and Coulson had closed his eyes with a despairing sigh. 

"Never thought I'd say this, but yeah. I do. Fury seems to have decided that I now have more time in the day to fill with even more paperwork."

And then Coulson kind of maybe just a bit--Coulson had _pouted_ at him, and Clint had been hit with a thousand megawatts of an 'Oh' moment, the kind that had levelled the foundations of the world as Clint knew it and left him floundering in the dust.

Oh. _Fuck._

"Barton?" Coulson had prompted, looking a shade thrown himself from Clint's utterly uncharacteristic silence, and Clint had made himself snap his mouth shut with a supreme effort of will.

"Yeah?" he'd croaked. "What? Was that 'Come home, Barton, I miss your baby blues?'"

'Baby'. _Jesus._ Someone just fucking shoot him now; he just _had_ to remind Coulson all the time just what a kid he still was.

"In your dreams, Barton," Coulson had replied, deadpan.

Clint couldn't handle that shit then, not that he can now, either; so he'd rung off shortly after, only to bury his face in his pillow and scream until he'd been completely out of breath and panting from the effort. 

_Coulson._ This is all kinds of fucked up and self-sabotaging, even for him.

So yeah. Year three, and Clint has graduated from high school, is old enough to be tried as an adult, has talked his way past more than one wall of condescending resistance and into the bed of a number of junior and probationary agents (he considers it practice for the real target, which is going to be about three thousand times more difficult and more impossible to secure), and has earned a grudging nod from Director Fury, sparsely given and reverse-proportional to how much it's actually worth. The fact that it wasn't a shot Clint had made that had earned it, but rather a teaching exercise in tactics, actually gives Clint a little glow of happiness inside when he forgets to squash it in horror.

Year three is also the year he goes out drinking with Bobby, Rogue and Logan and almost loses an arm in the brawl that seemed to follow Logan around town. He has never, ever, in his _life_ , seen fury like what blankets Coulson's face when he comes to see him in medical, breathing hard like he'd been running, tie slightly askew and hair conspicuously out of its impeccable order.

Clint's first thought is to bat his lashes coyly at him in the hopes of getting ravished in reward for still being alive (this is Clint's first, but far from the last, brush with the _really_ good drugs). Years, decades later, he would thank his lucky stars he didn't give in to the urge, because he knows somewhere deep inside where all his instinctive snapshot decisions originate that it would have been the end of whatever was building between them in the quiet times, the times when no one was around to notice that Coulson smiled every once in a while.

Coulson's fury is cold, the kind of cold that freezes the breath in your lungs, that looks at an ice shelf creeping closer and mocks it for being a sissy. Levelled at Clint, it makes him want to shrink back and hide beneath the covers. Levelled at _Logan_ , Clint is frankly surprised it doesn't peel the flesh from his bones, for all that Logan would heal.

"Sort. This. Out," Coulson hisses, huge shoulders about as broad as Logan's shaking so slightly that Clint thinks he's the only one who knows how close Coulson is from tearing out one of Logan's claws and skewering him with it.

Logan just nods, shoots Clint an apologetic wince and tries not to look like he's running out of SHIELD's medical department, away from Coulson's wrath.

That is the single sexiest thing Clint has ever seen. Really, thank god for the drugs or Clint would've been sporting a stiffy with nothing more than the thin hospital gown and bed sheet to cover it.

He opens his mouth to...fuck if he knows, say 'Sorry, Sir,' or 'I'm okay,' or some other inanity, when Coulson turns and looks at him again. The terrifying glare has abated somewhat, but it has left behind a weariness that makes something deep inside Clint ache in sympathy.

Coulson looks him up and down, like the doctor hadn't just given him a breakdown of Clint's stats and he needs to confirm his condition for himself. Clint's cheeks flame with confused embarrassment to find himself under such focused scrutiny. He doesn't think he's ever going to get used to it. 

"Barton," Coulson sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Even a year ago, this much body language from him would have floored Clint. It still shocks him that he is capable of drawing out this much reaction from Coulson. "I realise it's a thankless, hopeless task, but need I remind you that you are still under the legal drinking age?"

Clint scowls. It's not like he does this all the damn time; he rarely drinks at all, so he doesn't understand why Coulson makes such a fucking issue out of it. He's legal to fuck or be fucked by anyone he chooses; he's legal to drop out of college, not like Agent Asshole would _let_ him, but that's another beef for another time. He's even legal to be tapped for full-time agent, even if he isn't supposed to know that (SHIELD agents, for all their damaging effect on certain people's health, gossip like schoolgirls, and Clint has been a gossip-worthy topic ever since Agent Hugo Boss -- well, Agent Armani these days, Clint has been paying attention, horrifying as it had been for him to realise it -- dragged him in kicking and screaming. He knows that he's hot shit for those in the know involved in the selection of new agents).

He doesn't bother actually saying any of that, because Coulson knows it as well as he does, if not better. Rules and Regulations are like dirty mags for him, Clint is convinced. Besides, there's still a vaguely unhinged look around Coulson's eyes when he looks at Clint's bandaged arm; it tells Clint that this isn't so much about reprimanding him as it is about Coulson finding a way to pull himself back together, and Clint isn't about to fuck that up for him.

So instead, he falls back on what he does best.

"So give me something more interesting to do, instead of hanging out with Logan and seeing just how much booze it takes to get him really wasted, and I'll consider giving it up."

Coulson sighs again. It makes Clint grin this time, because it's so obviously concealing a huff of laughter. Disbelieving, slightly hysterical laughter, but laughter nonetheless. Coulson rubs his temples with a thumb and middle finger, huge hand spanning his face easily, and Clint clears his throat and looks away hurriedly, because those _hands_ , sweet Jesus.

"Perhaps it's time you met with Director Fury again," Coulson says with no inflection whatsoever. Clint's insides freeze, even though he's pretty sure this isn't a bad thing -- might be a step forward, actually. He can't help it; his brain is kind of hot-wired to assume the worst after years and years of learning by experience.

Still. Wouldn't do to creep Coulson out with all his issues any more than he already has. 

"'Bout fucking time, Coulson, I was going stir-crazy stuck at the kiddies' table."

Coulson eyebrows him, but doesn't launch into a 'if you think you'll be allowed to play with the grown-ups any time soon' put-down, like Clint expects him to. No, he looks--apprehensive, almost like he's...worried? Probably at the havoc Clint is bound to unleash once he's been let out of the pen.

"Barton," he starts to say, but then Rogue and Bobby come crashing through the curtain, nearly mowed down by an anxious-looking Ororo, and to Clint's frustration Coulson's mouth snaps shut again. 

"Ms Monroe," he says instead, calm and pleasant as always. Clint wonders if he's the only one who can read his frustration in the set of his shoulders, the way his trigger finger twitches by the hem of his suit jacket.

"Agent Coulson, I'm so sorry about this bunch of miscreants, who are in _so much trouble_ right now," she says, eyes boring into a cowed Bobby and a sheepish Rogue. "Can we be of any help to you? Professor Xavier will be distraught when he hears Clint was hurt."

Coulson hesitates, and Clint fucking cringes, expecting the flat, vicious reprimand that he'd been waiting for since Coulson turned up.

"No," Coulson says, with a hint of frostiness under the calm. "But thank you for asking. I presume you'll have your hands full with these two. Barton will recover, and if he decides to come after Logan for retribution, that's his business."

It's not a telling-off, but Clint still feels so, so young and small, even though Coulson just essentially extended him a vote of confidence. He shrugs lamely at the other three, who watch him with varying degrees of sympathy. 

And that, for all he knows, is that. 

(For the newcomers to his life, newsflash: he doesn't know much. Apparently. He never fucking learns.)

"Barton," Director Fury says in greeting, when he finally deigns to lift his head from frowning down at a three-inch-thick file and acknowledges that Clint's been patiently standing to attention in front of his desk all the while. "It may amuse you to know you've just won your handler five grand."

Clint scrunches his brows in confusion. "My what now? Sir," he tacks on hastily at the hint of a twitch in the corner of Fury's eye.

Fury sighs and shakes his head. "Still not all that bright," he mutters to himself (loud enough for Clint to hear, and Clint doesn't fool himself into thinking it isn't intentional). "Now, I _know_ you're not naive enough to imagine you haven't been under constant supervision from the start."

Clint shrugs in lieu of answering, because that much, he knows.

"Agent May?" he hazards. It's not his first guess, of course it isn't, but Agent Armani is far too important these days to bother with handling baby agents. Still, Fury is giving him the familiar 'I do not have the time for this shit' glare, and Clint swallows fitfully. Could it really be...has he been _this_ oblivious?

"Don't you wanna know how Agent Coulson won the five grand in question?" Fury drawls, and fuck if Clint's heart doesn't damn well stutter.

"Not sure that I do, sir," he says, even though that's _such_ a lie, he's dying to know.

Fury's answering eye-roll tells him plenty about how much Clint still needs to work on his poker face. "You're still here," he says, and it takes Clint a deplorably long time to work out that this is the answer to his unspoken question.

"Oh," he says weakly as it hits him all at once that, actually, he _is_. He sure hadn't seen that coming nearly four years ago, when Agent Asshole had caught him and wouldn't let go.

Fury, to Clint's sudden, excruciating embarrassment at being caught with his figurative pants down, is _smirking_ , the fucker. 

"Congratulations, Barton," he says. "You passed the test. This is the one and only time you get to pick and choose. You want in, or do you want out?"

Clint's entire body goes cold at the thought of being allowed to go freely. Fucking Stockholm Syndrome, he _knew_ he had it. Regardless, his voice doesn't choke when he calmly says, "I want in. Sir."

Fury looks at him for a long, long time, making Clint wonder about tests and passing and how there's never just the one, seeing as how many highly strung, highly paranoid people make it to SHIELD's top levels. 

"All right," Fury says at last, and grins. It's horrifying. "Level three clearance to start with, rotation of handlers until one sticks so no one can accuse me of fucking favouritism, Jesus Christ. Supervising agent - Melinda May, head her way to get your first assignment, then head down to HR to sort out your active agent package. Then R&D--you know what? May can handle this shit."

Clint is still a little shell-shocked, he knows that, so he cuts himself some slack when he merely manages to blink and blurt a dazed "Yes, sir," before turning to go. Too much information to process, too many levels of allusions and hints until thinking about it all makes his head hurt. He's quite sure he'll be unpicking through this conversation for years to come -- whenever he has the time from being thrown out of the nest and into the lair of whatever beasts have been bothering SHIELD of late.

"And Barton," Fury says when Clint's hand is curled on the door handle and he's so ready to get the hell out of there.

"Sir?" 

Fury looks back down at his paperwork, picking up his pen. "Be a good boy and don't get killed before you get to level five clearance, and you can ask Coulson about Project Murder Twins. Dismissed."

Clint scrams, wondering vaguely if he just dodged a bullet, or he let it hit him at full-speed.

As long as Coulson is involved somehow, Clint is not at all surprised to find that he doesn't mind either way.

\---

Fast-forward fifteen years--fifteen years?! In this place?? He needs to have his head examined, except the mere thought of this, what with all the goings-on of the past few months, is making him want to throw up -- and that's not just a figure of speech. Unless you've lived under a rock for the past year, you'll know what he means.

But back to the fifteen years thing, which still boggles his mind, he'll be honest. He's _thirty-four years old_ , when the fucking hell did that happen?? Did someone really actually press fast-forward when he wasn't looking?

Anyway. He probably hasn't had time to get used to the thought, because he's....kind of been busy in the meantime.

(Some of the things Clint's done in the past fifteen (!) years of his life/being with SHIELD (same thing, really), in no particular order:

1\. Made friends. Which, frankly, _shocking_ , but there it is. SHIELD seems to attract a certain kind of people, though, and they...fit. They dig out a place for themselves, like cockles in the sand, and it's a hell of a job digging them out again, so One-Eye mostly doesn't try too hard. (Those who _can_ be dug out and displaced were never SHIELD material anyway. It still shocks Clint that he, apparently, _is_ ).

First, there's Sitwell. He starts off on the list of field agents, thrown in the pool together until the Important Powers That Be (the Dread Pirate and Agent Armani and Agent Kickass (Hill), apparently) can separate the barracudas from the guppies; it doesn't take them all that long, but it fucking _feels_ like forever when he's got to trudge and sit through one boring-as-fuck exercise/lecture after another. Certain kinds of people stand out early on (he still maintains that if the instructors didn't _want_ to be pranked, they shouldn't present such easy targets, and it's totally unfair to "make an example of him" by sticking him on cafeteria clean-up duty for a month, but it does give him a chance to get to know the cooks so he magnanimously decides that he can cope with that). The more they stand out, the more they get thrown together (see re: clean-up duty). 

So the third time Clint gets to scrub out the men's changing rooms at the training compound with the same scowling, kinda skinny guy, they get to talking, and by the time their detention is up they've debated the finer points of the Rebel Force's tactics and exactly where they messed up on Hoth, and then Sitwell asks if Clint wants to grab a coffee, and by the time May, and then Coulson, catch on, they've kind of bonded. Coulson does catch on fast, though, and Clint and Sitwell run a bunch of missions together and bleed on each other a few times and kind of break Seattle a bit before Sitwell gets nabbed for the handler program under Coulson's (bald) eagle eye.

Clint may be a bit of a lone wolf kinda thing, but Sitwell is a popular guy, and it's strange but somehow not strange at all how it turns out the people who hang out with him don't mind hanging out with Clint as well. For the first time in his life, he gets to be around people who aren't freaked out by him in the least. He takes to it like fish to water -- and you better believe that he's the kind with teeth.

Point being. Friends. Kinda weird, only kinda nice, too.

2\. Managed to avoid getting killed (or maimed) by Fury on at least four separate occasions. Gets to the point where when Fury snarls at him about breaking protocol and demoting him to cleaner, Clint almost feels....fond. (There's that Stockholm Syndrome kicking in again, shit.)

3\. Nearly lost Agent May in the _spectacular_ cock-up that was Acapulco. By the time he'd caught on to what they thought was a double agent, who was in fact a _triple_ agent, and shot her ass into the ocean, May had been bleeding out from four bullet wounds, one of which nicking an artery. If Clint was feeling pissed off and betrayed, he could have only imagined what May must have felt like, seeing as she and the triple agent had been conducting more than one kind of debriefing. Clint had stayed on his knees for what felt like hours, fingers dug inside one of the bullet wounds, pressing tight on the spurting vessel, holding Melinda May's blood inside her body by what felt like sheer willpower until SHIELD's chopper had arrived. He might have saved her life that day, but he lost a handler, one he trusted, and May was never the same, after.

4\. Met and fell in love with and out of love with and in love (again) with Natasha, who somehow went from enemy of the state #3 to his best friend in the space of something like three months. It's one of the biggest mysteries of his life, how he managed to swing that one, with someone who takes precisely ZERO nonsense from anyone ever, including Fury. She and Sitwell get on like oil and water, and she and Coulson...Clint kind of isn't thinking about that. No, he isn't. No, sir. He isn't thinking about that, because if he thinks about it he's going to start to want to know just exactly when this possessive, unapologetically demanding feeling took root inside him, when it turned into this...monster that Clint can't hope to tame. The worst thing? Is that it's not Natasha that makes it rear its huge head and sniff the air with discontent. He has no idea what to do with that. At all.

It's possible that he's fucked six ways to Sunday. He still isn't thinking about it, and no one can make him, so there.

5\. He found out how eats-puppies-for-breakfast Fury lost his eye. He's...not telling that story, or even thinking about it too closely, because he had nightmares for a solid month the first time and he isn't too keen to revisit that. Didn't stop him from buying a parrot and smuggling it into Fury's office when he was out in the field. Coulson had had to run interference between Fury and the rest of SHIELD for two full hours before the yelling stopped and Fury reappeared. He had a green-and-blue feather sticking out of his collar. No one had asked.

Later, after chewing him out for a considerable length of time (Clint hadn't asked how Coulson knew not to believe his bullshit. He hadn't had to, really; the man knows him better than anyone alive), Coulson told Clint that Fury actually fucking loves that bird so much, he ordered a custom-made cage for it in his private quarters and feeds it special imported seeds and berries. Clint remembers laughing so hard he had to sit in a dark room for half an hour to stop from hyperventilating.

6\. He has fucked a number of people that would make even Tony raise an eyebrow -- some for work, most for pleasure. He has tried every gender and orientation under the sun, gone down on men and women both trans and born, gender-neutrals, pan-sexuals, you name it, he's done it. 

And yet.

And yet, it's somehow not the same as sitting hip-to-hip with Coulson in an evac chopper, or late night reality tv bitching sessions. (Clint _loves_ reality tv. He loves those poor schmucks who are actually more screwed up than he is, which is not something he thought could exist, like, ever -- he knows exactly how much of a bundle of issues he happens to be. He loves all the more the way, even if he's alone in the rec room to start with, a small crowd always gathers eventually, a makeshift odd-hours insomniac group made up of whoever is coming off assignments on the other side of the world, sleeping pattern shot to hell. These are SHIELD agents, which means their sarcasm levels were probably assessed when they were scouted and no one who didn't score 'lethal and possibly suicidal depending on the audience' was hired. SHIELD knows its personnel well, and hanging out with them is damn near priceless; Clint often laughs so hard in these sessions, he cries.

There are SHIELD agents, and there is Phil Coulson. Of course. Clint is half-certain that Coulson doesn't even enjoy reality tv, he just comes over to practice the diamond-sharp edge of his tongue (not that Clint is complaining, because that shit is hilarious). Doesn't change the fact that Clint feels something unclench when he looks up to see Coulson coming through the doorway. Nothing else in his life can compare to a raised eyebrow, a nod, the easy acceptance that Clint belongs there, in Coulson's presence.

7\. It's also possible that denial is...not working for him like he wants it to.

8\. He forgets what the point of this list was.

9\. That's easy to do when you're stuck in a small bunker deep underneath a large number of floors full of agents who are only alive due to sheer luck, due to the fact that they happened to not walk in front of Clint's bow a couple days ago. Weeks. Whatever. He forgets how long he's been down here, too. It just...doesn't seem important. They call it 'evaluation', but Clint knows what looking for and excuse to cut him loose looks like. He's seen it enough times to recognise the pattern, and the only man who might have bothered to find a way out of this for him is...gone.

Fuck. He wasn't going to cry, damn it.

Hours pass, maybe days, before the clang of the massive lock turning makes him snap out of his daze of self-pity. He looks up to see Sitwell's familiar face appear from around the five-inch-thick door. It's giving him a just-as-familiar unimpressed look. Fuck, Clint's missed him. He hadn't been stationed in New Mexico, which is probably the only reason he's still alive.

"The fuck are you doing, Barton, lazing around on your back while the rest of us are busting our asses up on the bridge trying to damage-control this mess?"

Clint rolls his eyes. "Wasn't my idea," he mutters. It's not like he volunteered to be stuck down here forever.

Sitwell sighs, so put-upon that Clint would've mocked him mercilessly, if he could be bothered to. He can't be bothered to do a great many things, these days.

"Get up," Sitwell says. "Your former team of mercenaries needs picking off, now they've crawled out of the woodwork. One thing this shitshow's been good for. You know them, you know where you found them. Go do your fucking job."

Clint debates for probably longer than he ought to whether to inform Sitwell where he can take his orders. A tingle of something trails down his right arm, making his palm warm. Fuck, he misses his bow.

Still.

"Fury know you're here?"

The look of disbelieving irritation Sitwell sends him makes Clint roll his eyes, dismissing the question for the idiocy it is.

"Where's Natasha?"

"Don't know. Off to Russia with Rogers, last I heard. It's above my clearance level, and yours. You coming or what?"

Clint considers. Shrugs. Not like he's got anything better to do, other than--yeah, no. He's not going there. Can't handle the truth, not yet. He will, eventually. Eventually, he might even ask after Lola. Not now, though.

"Damn right," Sitwell agrees when Clint voices the first part of that thought.

Who knows? Clint might even enjoy it. Surely, he can put off thinking about what he's not thinking about for long enough that the damage doesn't kill him.

\---

Before Clint knows it, it's November, and he's on the last leg of the mission that has taken him all over the country, state after state, chasing down his redemption. He did most of it alone, since Sitwell is a big cheese now, level seven clearance, putting on a better suit and taking over where--where other people left off, and Melinda May has demoted herself to level five, same as the Avengers that aren't him and Nat, and seems content to hide herself away behind towers of cardboard boxes full of paperwork. Natasha is still babysitting Barnes, who is playing the 'guess my sanity today' game better than anyone Clint has met, and the others are...busy. Tony has scrapped all his suits and dug the shrapnel out of his chest, but that doesn't mean he isn't currently holed up in the tower working on Mark 2.1: The Return of the Flash. Steve is...just as busy as Nat, for pretty much the same reasons. At least Barnes is _alive_ , and Clint's having a tough time not resenting the guy for it. At least Steve has a second chance. Clint has…

Well, Clint has fuck-all now. The assurance that Coulson wouldn't have wanted to see him like this. The startling knowledge that the others have his back (not that he's going to let them take the weight, because that's not who he is). 

Fury seems appeased with Clint's recovery, and he's been assigned to the Avengers permanent-like. There's still some argument as to who gets to be their handle, now that--that Coulson's gone, and he should really stop stuttering over the fact even in the confines of his own head, since it's not going to change a fucking thing. So Clint drives the last leg of his return to New York, breathes in the cool twilight air, dreams about getting to the helicarrier where he can have a proper shower and sleep for a week knowing that the last remains of his 'break' are being processed several floors below. He's mopped up the last of the mess he made, and now it's time to go back.

The only thing Clint doesn't know is how he's going to face SHIELD knowing that his tether is gone, severed, that he's never again going to feel the calm sense of belonging that he had gotten used to with Coulson around. But cope he will, because...it's the only thing left to him now. He was a coward, lived a coward's life, preferring to cling to what he had with Coulson rather than strike out for something more, for a bigger payout. Now he'll have to live with the consequences.

Tomorrow, after he gets up and showers and calls Nat to tell her he's back, he's going to grit his teeth and go down to the garage. He's going to go down there, and he's going to go to stall C382, and he's going to say 'hello' to the only thing Coulson loved more than life itself. He hopes Fury made sure they treated Lola well, because if not, there are going to be _words_ being had, and Clint might end up thrown out on his ear after all.

Of course, it's worse. So much worse. The worst, really.

Because when Clint gets to stall C382, Lola is…gone.

Clint tries taking a few deep breaths. He even tries counting to three hundred. None of that has any bearing on him marching into Fury's office twenty minutes later, slamming his hands down on his desk, and yelling, "Where is she?!" right into the Director's face.

Fury leans back, watching Clint calmly out of his one eye. He doesn't even twitch. 

"I think you want to step back, Barton."

Clint snarls. "The fuck I do." 

"Oh, you really fucking do, agent," Fury reiterates. He still hasn't moved; his hands are still laced over his middle, but there's a hum of menace coming off of him that Clint can't ignore, no matter how much he tells himself he doesn't care.

He pushes back, away from the desk, stands there with his hands hanging helplessly at his sides. 

"Where is she?" he repeats, quieter, rougher, too close to begging for his liking.

Fury stares back at him, doesn't even need to ask what Clint is talking about. After what seems like an age, he sighs. 

"She has been moved somewhere safe," he allows, looking back down at his desk. It's a favourite avoidance tactic, and Clint has been treated to it more than most. "It's what he wanted. In the event that...well, in circumstances like these, he was very specific about what he wanted for her."

Clint stands there and tries to breathe, but there's something sharp and wide lodged in his chest that he can't quite navigate around. 

"Who drove her?"

That has Fury pausing. It seems...a weightier pause, somehow. Like something is being decided. He looks up at Clint, watches him for what feels like hours, longer than his test, longer than any of the other times Clint fucked up, longer even than he watched him while Clint was stuck down in the bunker under SHIELD, waiting to hear what his fate was going to be. Clint stands there and lets him look, because…well, he's got nothing, now. He's all emptied out. He's going to keep going like a good little agent, because they need him and he knows he can be useful, but...he's got no reason to want to make it out of the fucked-up messes he tends to get himself into more often than not, other than his survival instinct, and, well, his sense for self-preservation has never been the strongest. (Which is why marching in the Director's office and yelling at him had seemed like a good idea at the time, obviously.)

It goes on for so long, Clint thinks he isn't going to get an answer to his question. That this is Fury's way of telling him to fuck off. He clenches his jaw, knows it's ticking, but fuck, he's still so _angry_ , furious with himself and with Fury and with Asgard and just. He's this close, okay, he's _this. Close_ \--

Fury apparently finds what he's looking for, because the lines around his eye crease ever so slightly. 

"I'm still not touching her, agent," he says, then looks down again and picks up his pen. "Now get the hell out of my office."

There's so much venom packed in the latter that Clint is on the other side of the door before he even realised he was going to move. Huh. Apparently his sense of self-preservation is hardier than he'd thought. He wants to laugh at himself for the balls to do what he'd just done, but that's another matter for a time when he doesn't feel like his head is going to come apart at the seams, trying to work out the first part of their exchange. God damn Fury and his love for cryptic shit; it had taken Clint long enough to work through the last time he'd been subjected to it, fifteen years and change ago. And this...this feels important. Too important to screw up.

Luckily, this time, he's got someone smarter and _way_ more versed in this bullshit than him to help.

He pulls out his StarkPhone and thumbs at the screen until it gives him his call log. He presses the top entry (it's always the top entry, these days, and that's yet another change he has to get used to).

"Nat? I'm coming over. I need help with some Fury-speak."

Of course, by the time he makes it to the tower, he walks into what looks like a full-blown emergency Avengers council. He doesn't know why he's even surprised. They've commandeered the kitchen table, which is big enough to seat a football team comfortably; Clint always thought that was a bit excessive, but--well, they seem to be growing every time he comes round, so. There's Nat and Steve, Barnes sitting between them in a pair of track pants and a grey tee that shows off the sleek metal prosthetic Stark had fashioned for him. He looks a bit sulky, but apparently it's one of his saner days if he's taking part. Tony sits at Steve's other side, fiddling with a tablet, because of course he is. Bruce is carrying two steaming cups of tea to the table, one of which he places at Nat's elbow. She smiles at him, nudging the chair to her right away from the table in silent invitation. Thor is there, too, looking hilarious in jeans and a hoodie (Clint didn't know they made them in this size, but maybe it's custom, seeing as there's a picture of Mjolnir on the front). Beside him sits Jane, who gives Clint such a warm smile when she sees him that Clint feels a suspicious prickling behind his eyes. He knows his answering smile is crooked by the way hers dims a little, but it's all he can give her right now. The circle is completed by Ms Potts, sitting beside Tony. She apparently has a day off, because she too is wearing jeans and a loose white shirt. Her face is clean, and her hair is caught in a ponytail, and she is still the most knock-out gorgeous woman Clint has ever seen, other than Natasha.

There are two empty seats at the table, one beside Jane and one opposite, where it faces the group. Clint wonders at them for a minute, until a startled noise comes from behind him. He turns, but has little chance to see who it is before he is hit by a body that wraps itself around him and hugs him so tightly his breath hitches. The smell hits him first, patchouli and vanilla, a familiar washing detergent, a cloud of something that smells like the beach rising from the wild tresses tucked under his chin. He smiles, a little more genuinely, and hugs Darcy back, lets the warmth of her sink into his chest, ease his breathing a little. The last time someone touched him like this had been Nat, and that was months and months ago. He hadn't realised how much he'd missed it.

"Clint," Darcy muffles in his shoulder. It's packed tight with relief, a slightly shattered edge to it that makes him grip her tighter. 

"Hi, honey," he says, dropping a kiss to the top of her head before pillowing his cheek on top of it. They just stand there for long minutes, neither quite ready to let go. He catches Tony's curious eye, sees him lean over to Jane and gesture at the two of them. Jane just shrugs, but she's smiling too, softer now but just as pleased. She has never been big on hugging, but she knows she can rely on Darcy to get both their sentiments across. 

Darcy lets him go at last, looking away and brushing at her eyes surreptitiously. Clint combs her hair back with his fingers, lets his palm linger on the nape of her neck. They had fucked, once, both of them drunk and relieved that it was over, Darcy sad about Jane being sad, Clint sad, because...it was time to go back to New York, back to the rhythm of missions and debriefs, no more hanging out in Coulson's space just because he wanted to and he had the excuse. After, it had been so easy to just lie there with her over his chest, and it hadn't felt awkward, even if both of them knew nothing was coming out of this. Darcy was possibly the best friend Clint had ever made by himself without bloodshed being involved. 

They part as they come to the table. Darcy circles around to sit by Jane, and Clint takes the center seat, facing the group. 

"So, you're back," Tony says before Clint can open his mouth. "Are you back properly? Because if yes, there's a room on the top floor with your name on the door. No, it literally has your name on the door, it's yours, welcome to the family."

Steve sighs, sending Clint an amused look. "Tony, let the poor man catch his breath, at least, before you pressgang him into moving in. How are you, Clint?"

Clint wants to laugh, because Steve is always so _earnest_ about these things. It's impossible not to get caught up in that, not to respond. It'd be like kicking a puppy who's jumping up trying to lick your face. 

"I'm decent," he allows. "It's good to be back." He's kind of surprised by how much he means that. "Thanks for the offer, Stark," he adds, grinning as he looks at the rag-tag collection of individuals around the table. "I will...consider it."

"You do that," Tony says magnanimously, while the others snicker. 

"So what did you want to talk about?" Nat says, and Clint can actually _feel_ everyone focusing. It's...pretty amazing, like a laser twitching to the right frequency. 

He makes a face, rubbing at the back of his neck out of habit. He can see Natasha recognising the gesture, sees her lean back in her chair and give him the 'what did you do _this_ time' look that is too familiar by half. 

"So this morning, I went to look for Lola." 

Natasha winces. It's so telling, and it's still so amazing to Clint that she lets these people see this much emotion from her. She lifts her eyebrows at him, silently asking how that went, while the others share confused looks.

"It was time," Clint prevaricates with a shrug, avoiding her eyes. He doesn't want to know what she'll say (if he's honest, he doesn't really _need_ to look to know).

"Okay, I'm sorry, I have to stop you there. Who's Lola? Are we--do you need an addition to your rooms added in? A bit of redecorating?"

Clint sends Tony an unimpressed look. "What?" Tony says defensively. "You're being all cryptic spy, you know I hate that crap."

"Lola was Coulson's car," Natasha explains, taking mercy on Clint, because he doesn't know that he could actually bring himself to say it.

Tony blinks. "And?" 

"He doesn't get it, Nat. Hey, uh, Jarvis, right?"

"Indeed, agent Barton."

"Hi. Uh, can you bring up surveillance video from, let's see, January 7, 2011? SHIELD base in New York, 2245, parking level 2. Don't even try, Stark," he says when Tony opens his mouth, looking defensive. Tony snaps it shut again with a little twitch that looks like the body language equivalent of 'yeah, okay.' 

"Searching database," Jarvis says. Clint eyeballs Tony, who shrugs again unrepentantly. 

Moments later, a projection appears above the table, shining blue like all of Tony's virtual tools. The video unspools in the middle while specifics flash in the margins, time, date, access codes. There is nothing for the first few seconds, but then there's movement at the top and there they are, him and Coulson in Lola, driving through the entrance to the parking level. Jarvis pauses the screenshot without being asked. Clint remembers that night vividly: it was mild for early January, cold but not freezing, cloudy skies keeping the day's warmth from dispersing. Both of them had been wrapped up in their winter coats and scarves, and Clint had begged Coulson to take the top down, because god, but he loved riding in that car like this, the wind in his face, feeling like he was flying. He wants to throw up a little looking at the image, because they're--he's laughing, and Coulson's smiling, and Christ, but it feels like a punch in the gut, like too little too late, to see that expression on Coulson's face, to know what it might have meant, if Clint hadn't been so lost in keeping his distance to notice. Not that it had worked, because Clint looks at himself in that screenshot and he--he has never seen himself look so happy like he did right then. It's so ridiculously revealing, he wonders how he managed to fool himself for so long. 

"That's Lola," Nat says, saving him again from trying to form words in his current state.

The others blink, some more than others. 

"Fuck me, she's a beautiful dame," Barnes says, the first thing Clint has ever heard from him. The appreciation in his voice is completely real, though, and really, Clint sympathises. 

"You always did like your cars," Steve says fondly. There's something about him now -- Clint can't put his finger on it; possibly, it's the unexpected ease in his posture, the lack of ghosts in his eyes. He is not the man Clint remembers from before, and Clint's happy for him, he really is. 

Tony lets out a slow whistle, eyes flitting between the image and Clint. "So, wait, were you and Agent--" he starts, and god, Clint has to shut him down immediately, because fuck, it shouldn't but it _hurts_. He can't even look at Nat or Darcy, can't see what must be on their faces.

"It was my birthday. Natasha was out of the country, so Coulson took me to see _Country Strong_ , I hadn't stopped talking about it for weeks. The lead actress looks a lot like you, Ms Potts." 

Pepper smiles at him, so unforced, it's still kind of difficult to grasp that these people trust him, regardless of what he'd done.

"He only did it to shut me up," he adds, and then wishes he hadn't because they all have this look on their faces that is bringing him out in hives. God, this is the worst.

" _Anyway,_ " he says forcefully, because he came here for a reason. "I went to see Lola, and she wasn't there."

Nat sits up immediately, gaze sharpening. "What?" she says darkly.

"Yeah, she was gone. So...I went to Fury." He winces. 

"Oh my God," Nat says, throwing herself back in her chair and passing a hand over her face. "What did you do?"

He wants to be insulted, he really does, but...she knows him too well. "I might have yelled a bit."

"Jesus," Nat mutters, while Tony is gaping at him with something like hero worship in his eyes. "And?"

"And, he said that she'd been moved to a safe location, and when I asked who drove her, he treated me to his stare of doom for like half an hour before he told me, and I quote, he's still not touching her."

Nat's eyes narrow. The others look confused, but they don't know how Coulson is--was--about that car. "Clint…"

"No, I know. Nat, I _know_. I just thought--"

"He wouldn't say that, not unless--"

"Right, see, that's what I thought, but--"

"Do you think--?"

"Honestly? I don't know, that's why I came to you, I figured I was just--"

"No. I don't think you were." 

They stare at each other in complete silence for long minutes. Clint knows what wishful thinking can do to a person, and he's relying on Natasha to tell him if that's all it is.

"You know what?" Natasha says at last, low and ominous. "He fucking would."

Natasha swearing was always a sure-fire clue that things are about to get violent.

"He would," Clint agrees through his teeth. "That fucking bastard."

The others watch them like spectators at a tennis match, silent and enthralled -- until Barnes clears his throat. 

"I'm sure I have no idea what you two are talking about, but I think I get some of the drift, and if I'm right, then I agree. Fury is the kind of operative who would make you think someone's dead if it gets him the results he wants."

_That_ gets the others galvanised. 

"Do you mean to say that the valiant son of Coul is alive?" Thor demands, seriously displeased at the deception. Jane takes his hand, a militant glint in her eye, while Bruce goes a little green around the edges, eyes fixing on Natasha's face immediately. 

"What?" Pepper asks, distraught, while Tony gets that look on his face that promises to deliver Director Fury _the_ most horrendous headache ever.

Steve, though. Steve is looking straight at Clint, eyes steady and sure, if pinched around the edges. It's a look that says, 'give the order,' and Clint is so, _so_ tempted. 

But. If there's one thing Phil Coulson drilled into him from the start, it's not to jump the gun without at least _some_ evidence to support it.

"Tony," he says, cutting through the babble. "Can you get us surveillance of Lola's parking space on the helicarrier the past few months?"

"You betcha," Tony says, fingers flying over the tablet already. "JARVIS, remember that protocol we embedded into the new system? Yeah, punch it."

"Understood, sir," Jarvis says, and blue-edged images start appearing over the table. In most of them, Lola sits still and dormant under the harsh fluorescent lights, but between one and the next, only empty space remains.

"There," Clint says harshly, and the images stop. The date stamp on the one where Lola's missing is for September 27th. "Can you go back day by day?"

"Certainly, agent Barton."

Twenty minutes later, they know that Lola was airlifted off the helicarrier on September 23rd, 2300. She was delivered to SHIELD's airstrip in New York, and from there she disappeared. Three huge trucks could be seen leaving the airstrip in three different directions.

"Someone went to a lot of trouble to cover their tracks," Bruce muses. 

Natasha turns her head, leaning a little closer to him than strictly necessary, Clint thinks. Her voice is low, far from her usual straight and to the point demand. "Doc? You think you can find out which truck we should be aiming for?"

Huh. Clint hadn't seen this one coming. 

Bruce's eyebrows scrunch, and then smooth out again. "What, like--"

" _The Italian Job_?" Steve and Barnes chorus, turning to grin at each other.

"They really loved that movie," Tony tells Clint, smirking. There's something fond in his eyes, though; Clint realises it's there no matter which one of this bunch Tony's talking about. Amazing. Dick move or not, Fury's gamble actually paid off. 

Not that that makes Clint any less inclined to break his fucking jaw.

"Right, yeah," Bruce says. "Tony?"

"JARVIS, find out how much a 1963 Chevrolet Corvette weighs, then adjust the satellite images to show the weight of the trucks -- hell, you've seen the movie, you know the drill."

"Indeed, sir, thank you for remembering you don't have to tell me how to do my job."

"Stow it, sassmeister, we've got work to do."

The tableau breaks. Darcy drags Jane off to do--something, Clint isn't following beyond smiling when she grins at him from the doorway. Thor heads for the kitchen, because when he's feeling on alert, he eats. That's just how Thor is. Steve nudges Barnes out of the door with some spiel about taking a nap; Clint is _not going there_. And Clint stands from the table and takes himself off to the living room to pace. He feels confident about leaving the tracking to Bruce and Tony, who is like a dog with a bone when it comes to finding out stuff people don't want him to know. 

He's not sure what's going to happen once they find Lola. He could be blowing this shit completely out of the water. It could be, Lola was sent back to Mom and Pop Coulson, whom Clint had never met but he'd heard Coulson talk to on the phone enough times to recognise by the look on Coulson's face. It could be, Clint shouldn't pry into other people's grief.

Or, it could be that he's being a coward again. If it's true, if they have rumbled Fury's plan, he doesn't know what he'll do. He can't just stomp over to the man and demand to know why he wasn't told. That crap wouldn't fly with either of them. Would it be enough to know that Coulson was alive? Alive and well somewhere, and he didn't want anything to do with the Avengers anymore, apparently. 

"Clint," Natasha says from the doorway to the living room. She sounds uncharacteristically hesitant. "I need to show you something."

Clint braces himself. God, he doesn't want to know. Not that Coulson's dead, and not that Coulson is alive and washing his hands off of them. Fuck, he should never have stirred this shit up.

"Yeah?" he says, and makes himself turn. Natasha is holding a tablet angled to face her. Her knuckles are white on the edges. 

"I accessed Coulson's file in the SHIELD database. I thought, neither of us would have thought to do it since, so it might contain new information."

She hands the tablet over, and, well. Clint has his answer.

No. It isn't enough just knowing Coulson is alive. It's not _nearly_ enough, but it almost brings him to his knees, all the same. 

"That fucking asshole," he whispers, and he doesn't know whether he's talking about Fury, or Coulson, or both. Level 7 access: granted, the tablet says, clear as day. So if they'd just thought to look, they'd have known.

"He must have had his reasons," Natasha says quietly, reading his thoughts as usual.

Clint lets out a harsh laugh. "Oh, yeah? Sure, sure he had. I guess we weren't all that important to him, after all. Look, he's got new toys to play with already."

_Ward, Grant, agent, specialist,_ the tablet says. _Clearance level 7._

_May, Melinda, agent, administrator, clearance level 7,_ and that one hurts even worse, twists the knife that bit deeper. Clint smiles, wants to close his eyes, wants to beat his head into a wall. _Disposable_ , his mind says, and for the first time in eighteen years, Clint believes it. 

"Fitz, Leo, agent, engineer, clearance level 7. Simmons, Jemma, biochemist, clearance level 7."

"Clint," Natasha says. She sounds shredded. 

"May, Melinda, agent." His voice breaks. Fuck, this is embarrassing.

"Clint, don't do this to yourself," Natasha says. It's such a flashback to that cell in the helicarrier that Clint staggers. 

He can't stop looking at Ward's file. 

"Clint," Natasha says again. She sounds like she'll keep saying it for as long as it takes to call him back from whatever place he'd gone, seeing this.

It looks…it almost looks like Coulson's replacing them, building a new team for himself, a better team, people who won't get him killed when they're compromised. 

He can't do this.

He hands the tablet back to Natasha, who takes it cautiously.

"I'm gone. I'll keep my cell on me if you need to reach me."

She lets him go, because she's always known him best, and she knows that stopping him now won't mean he'll stay. She knows he'll come back, eventually, but it won't be in a couple of days, and it won't be for the same reasons as last time. Something inside him has broken, and he doesn't know how to fix that. Doesn't know if he can.

All these years, and he should have realised -- the one person who had the power to break him was always going to be the one who put him together in the first place.

\---

He hadn't meant to do this. He had meant to be all stoic and accepting of Coulson's choice and make himself scarce so he didn't do something _monumentally_ stupid like punch Fury in the face. 

So it doesn't explain why he is currently skulking on a rooftop in downtown Boston, looking on as a dingy surveillance van carefully approaches the epicenter of a certain amount of gossip amongst those in the know at SHIELD. (The coordinates to which he had received via an untraceable stark.net account. He is really going to have to buy Natasha the most enormous gift basket when he gets back. Probably buy Tony something, too, if he can ever come up with something the guy doesn't already have.

Then again, he has his suspicions as to how Natasha knew where he was, so. He won't smash his phone to pieces just now, and that ought to be enough for the both of them.)

He flattens himself to the roof, just his head poking up so he has a clear visual on the goings on. The door of the van slides open, and Ward jumps out, sliding it shut behind him immediately. From the angle of the van Clint has no idea who is inside it, but he can make an educated guess. That thought leads to another, and he freezes, resisting the urge to look up. What's done is done, and there's no reason to bring more attention to himself than he already has. 

Ward is in the building moments later. Clint follows his progress from the flashes of movement he sees through the window, the stray projectile that breaks the glass. It's all remarkably silent for an infiltration gone south, but he'll be damned if he gives his replacement points for skill. 

Minutes later, a black SUV with SHIELD insignia arrives, and Clint chokes and bites on his wrist to stifle it when the door opens and Coulson climbs out. 

What kills him is that...Coulson looks the same. Wool coat, black suit, striped shirt, patterned tie fashioned in a neat half-Windsor. It's all so familiar that it punches Clint right in the gut, makes him afraid to close his eyes, like when he opens them again Coulson will prove to be just a figment of his imagination. He watches Coulson remove his shades -- the same asshole shades Clint remembers from eighteen years ago, and yes, that's Coulson all over for you -- and squint up at the building, where Ward's head is now sticking out from a window on the third floor.

"All contained, sir," Ward says, and Coulson nods, brings a radio to his mouth, most likely calling in Simmons and Fitz. Then he stands there, neat as a pin, hands clasped before him, waiting, _breathing_ , and Clint has to just...not be there anymore. He's seen what he needed to see, and there's no point lingering, tempting fate with the chance of discovery. Just as he starts to crawl backwards away from the edge, Coulson stiffens. His head comes up, and he starts to turn, straight in Clint's direction. Clint ducks, heart beating triple-time, lodging in his throat. He can't let Coulson see him. He just...can't. He's too afraid to know what Coulson's face might look like if he finds him. There's only so much Clint Barton's battered ego can take.

He waits until another vehicle arrives, and doors slam, and excited babble reaches his position. Then he risks peeking the tiniest bit, and is rewarded with Coulson's back, directing Simmons and Fitz towards a ruffled-looking Ward watching sourly from the entrance to the building. Off to the side, Melinda May leans against the door of the second SUV, looking thoughtful. Another woman with long dark hair -- she must be Skye -- is peeking inside the building through the dusty windows of the ground floor.

Clint sees his chance. In seconds, he's across the street on the other side of the crime scene, loping up a fire escape and vaulting to the roof. He keeps this up for another few blocks, until he's far enough away that he feels safe to get back on the street. The next underground station he gets to, he boards the first train in the opposite direction. He's getting as lost as he knows how to, winding up at Harvard after a while. He gets off, climbs back aboveground, and only exhales when he comes across a park, open air, flat for a mile or two either way. It's cold now, mid-November, but Clint needs the nip, feels like it's the only thing keeping him in the here and now. He's restless, jittery; his skin feels too small. He is torn between marching back over there, getting in Coulson's face and demanding an explanation, and never seeing him again, never singling him out, never knowingly putting himself in the same vicinity as where he might be. Jesus, Natasha is right. He should stop doing these things to himself. 

Again. Doesn't explain why two weeks later, he's lying on yet another filthy roof, looking down on yet another bust, only this time…

This time, Skye is up, close and personal in Coulson's space, taking to him earnestly about something, and Coulson is doing his 'I am an Agent' poker face, but he's listening, and Clint's gut churns because that's _his_ move. _He_ used to be the one to talk Coulson into the crazy shit; _he_ used to be the one that could get Coulson to consider the nuts ideas, the ones that would get other handlers offloading him faster than he can say, "No, really, it would work!"

And now it's her. Whom Coulson chose and picked himself. Clint has read her file too, now, what they have of one; he has read Deputy Director Hill's recommendations, and he knows Coulson went against them anyway, like he sometimes did for...some people. 

The real kicker is, he knows that it's not just him. He is far from the thought that the world revolves around him, and he'd never dare consider that he's special to Coulson, that Coulson can't treat other people like he treated him. He knows that there are people out there who need Phil Coulson, maybe even more than he used to. (Than he still does.) He knows that, and he knows what Phil Coulson's faith can do for a person, and--

And it still kills him inside to see it directed at someone else, when he has been left behind.

Thankfully, being an angsty little bitch does not detract from his legendary observational skillz ™, because right then a movement from across the street catches his eye. At first, he thinks it's one of Coulson's new herd of puppies, and he's posed to hide again when he sees the flash of light on metal and realises that's a gun in the figure's hands, and it's aimed right at Coulson's head.

Clint doesn't even need to think. The distance between them is challenging, and the angle is poor, and maybe no one could make that shot with the short-barrelled Glock that has been Clint's off-the-field back-up weapon for years (he hadn't thought to bring his retractable bow, stupid, _stupid_ ), but those other people are not Hawkeye. He pulls it out, braces his arm against the edge of the roof, sights along the barrel and takes the shot in less time than it would have taken to shout down a warning. 

Of course, then he has to run away really very fast, because the bad guy goes tumbling out the window and Coulson is looking up and a bunch of cops are swarming inside the building on whose roof Clint was perching, and he's not going to get himself caught. He isn't. 

He doesn't let himself look back, or down, at where Coulson still stands.

\---

They could have played this game of cat-and-mouse forever, Clint reckons. He couldn't have said when he might have been ready to face Coulson, how much longer he might have found it necessary to stalk him before he got the balls to approach, but as usual, Coulson is the one to track him down first. Clint is going to _kill_ Natasha.

It's not even a big deal. One night, there's a knock on the door of his halfway decent motel room somewhere in upstate New York, and Clint, because he's an idiot, opens it.

Coulson doesn't look much different from that night when he showed Clint to his first room at SHIELD. Sure, there's a bunch of years on him, extra lines where Clint's eyes can't miss them, but his face is the same, and so's his body. Clint has to fight the instinctive reaction to step back and let him in.

Coulson looks at him cautiously, like he's bracing for something. When Clint doesn't, what, fall over from shock? Coulson merely sighs. 

"So it was you. On that roof," he clarifies, when Clint just looks back, confused. "No one could have made that shot with a Glock 27. No one but you."

Clint lets his mouth quirk, there and gone again. "Yeah, I'm just that good." It's nowhere near his usual cockiness, but give him a break here.

Coulson's mouth quirks, too. "May I come in?" he asks, actually asks, so calm and collected, and Clint maybe wants to cry just a little from how familiar this is, how much he's missed it.

"Knock yourself out," he says instead, leaving the door to putter further inside the room, sit down on the bed because his knees are feeling weak.

Coulson does come in, closing the door behind him. 

"Should I ask how you found out?" he says, and Clint, Clint might see red for a minute there.

"Natasha worked it out. Of course. The weird thing, though? All she had to do was log into the system, pull your file. Isn't that weird? That seems weird to me, what with all the secrecy and letting us think you were _dead_."

Coulson's fingers twitch by his sides. It's a tell. Clint is actually getting to him, which, colour him shocked.

"It was classified," Coulson says.

"It was level seven clearance," Clint yells right in his face, because fuck that noise. "I _have_ level seven. So does Nat. You could have told us."

"It was need-to-know," Coulson says, looking pained, but fuck, Clint doesn't even care what Coulson feels like, what his reasons might have been. He's the one who feels raw, cut up. 

"Right," he says, nodding, shifting to sit sideways on the bed, trying not to show how much that hurt. "Of course. And I didn't need to know."

"Clint--"

"Get out," Clint says. There's a little voice inside his head screaming at him, demanding to know what the fuck he thinks he's doing, but the rest of him just feels...numb.

"No," Coulson says. He doesn't say it like he's asking, he says it like it's fact: No. He's not moving.

Clint turns around, staring at him, eyebrows raised. "No?"

"No," Coulson confirms. His shoulders are shaking the tiniest bit, and Clint is suddenly reminded of that night in the hospital when he was just a kid, before he got tabbed for active status. It's not the last time Coulson had seen him in a hospital bed, but Clint thinks it might have been the last time Coulson let him see how much it affected him.

If it really did at all afterwards, that is.

"Coulson--" he starts, and he doesn't really know what he would have said to follow it up, but he can't, because Coulson is stepping closer and all of a sudden, Clint can't breathe.

"Clint. I'm sorry. I played that all wrong. I didn't think--" he sighs, looking down. He looks so vulnerable all of a sudden; Clint's the one who's sitting down, but Coulson is the one who seems smaller than he was just minutes ago. 

"I want you to know that I didn't just walk away from you. Words were said. Director Fury is not best pleased with me right now, but he made it a direct order, and I didn't have a choice. He promised me he'd tell you, when the right time came."

Clint scoffs. "So he can manipulate us some more? Yeah, that sounds like him. You maybe wanna warn him that Stark and the others know, too, and they're not particularly pleased with him right now, either."

Coulson winces, which is a huge concession for him. He still does it in the direction of Clint's knees, though. When he looks up at Clint's face, the look in his eyes is so understanding, so supportive, that Clint feels his mask crack down the middle, just shatter into fragments. He is left with nothing but himself, a tired man who's taken one too many hits of late. He looks at Coulson's face, and he doesn't understand how it took him so long to get just how gone he was on him, just how deeply he had let Coulson get his claws inside him without even trying, because now it feels like he's ripping right through him to get free, and Clint? Clint doesn't have the strength to fight him anymore.

"Whatever," he says wearily. "I get it. New life, new team, out with the old, in with the new. There's the door, I know how much you want to use it."

Coulson's jaw ticks. "Do not presume to tell me what I'm feeling," he grits out after almost a full minute of silence, and it's just another hit, isn't it? That Clint thought he knew him at all. 

"Sure thing," he agrees. He twists over the covers and lets himself fall back against the pillow with a tired exhale. He rubs his fingers over his closed eyes, wondering at how much his body apparently still trusts Coulson, to let him do something like this in his presence. Wonders if he could ever trust someone like that again, knowing it hurts this much when they inevitably leave him.

Coulson is silent for a long time, so long it makes Clint wonder if he left and Clint just didn't hear it. But then--

"Why did you find me?" Coulson demands. He sounds like he's standing right next to the bed now. "Why bother, when you won't even let me explain?"

Clint has no answer to that. He hadn't known, when he started, --well, anything. Not that he would go track Coulson down, not that he wouldn't be able to stay away. He doesn't know what he's doing here. He has no idea how this thing will pan out. 

"I just wanted to see," he mumbles. "I needed to know." 

He hears a shuffle, but doesn't find it necessary to open his eyes just to watch Coulson walk out of the door. They fly open the next second anyway, when he feels the bed dip, and then they flare with shock when Coulson swings one long leg over his body and straddles him, hands on either side of his head, looking down into his face from way too close. He is _so close_. 

Clint's mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

Coulson smirks. It's a thing of beauty, amused and fond at the same time. Clint thinks he fell in love with that smirk first of all, before any of the rest came to pass.

"Speechless at last. I've lost count of how many years I've waited to see it."

Clint's mouth works on autopilot. "Well, you didn't have to get yourself killed so I would be."

Coulson's smirk dims, turns softer. "No," he agrees. "But it seems to have done the trick."

He feels so good on top of Clint that Clint honestly has trouble breathing, let alone processing.

"What," he says cleverly, fingers twitching to convey the scene. He doesn't dare move for fear it will make Coulson move away, too.

"It's been so long, and you still aren't getting it. I thought, desperate measures were needed."

"Getting what?" Clint asks, because yeah, he never said he wasn't a grade-A asshole himself. Takes one to know one, after all.

Coulson sighs. It's exasperated, sure, but there's no hiding the crinkling around his eyes that screams of how much he's enjoying himself. 

"This," Coulson says, and kisses him.

Clint's mouth falls open automatically from the shock of Coulson's lips on his, the way he turns his head, slants his mouth, kisses Clint with what feels like years of pent-up desire. Clint lets out a truly atrocious moan, but that doesn't seem to put Coulson off, because he only kisses him deeper, sneaks his tongue in Clint's mouth and--

Yeah, he's done narrating. There is no thought. All he can do is feel, all he can process is straining closer, further into Coulson's arms. His hands curl around Coulson's shoulders and tug sharply, until Coulson is pressing him into the bed, and it feels--

Oh, it _feels_.

"You are such a fucking asshole," Clint says breathlessly when Coulson lets him up for air, mouth migrating down to his jaw.

"Why are you still talking," Coulson says, and makes sure Clint can't for quite a long while after that.

It ends like this: clothes strewn all over the floor, gloriously messy. 

Coulson's hands on his ass. 

Coulson's gravelly voice in his ear, "Say my name." 

Clint sobbing with desperation to get _Phil's_ dick inside him, complaining bitterly when _Phil_ makes him wait. 

Straining, and grinding down, and looking into those blue eyes hazy with desire, and kissing him, and kissing him, and never wanting to stop.

"Never letting you go again," he's pretty sure he says at one point, and has to kiss Phil again when he replies, "I'm counting on it."

When it's over, when they've spent long minutes just lying on each other and getting their breaths back, Phil looks around lazily. "Look at this mess you've made, Barton," he drawls.

Clint doesn't miss a beat, for all that he feels like his brain was just fucked right out of him -- his reputation is at stake. He sends Phil a filthy grin. "Wasn't just me, sir."

Phil gets this look in his eyes, and suddenly Clint doesn't think they're talking about the room anymore when Phil says, quietly, "No, it wasn't." Clint sighs happily when Phil rolls him into his arms again, draws him in against his chest, wraps around him, hand playing with Clint's fingers. It's so soothing, after such a long time of running on empty, that Clint doesn't know when he slips into sleep, knows only that Phil is still there when he wakes up, and that's enough.

\---

Of course, it's never that easy. Clint is the happiest he's ever been, but this isn't some romance novel where the protagonists handwave everything that's happened so far and embark on their ride into the sunset.

That's not to say that things aren't also incredibly simple, at least in Clint's eyes. He loves Phil; Phil lo--lik--wants him. Everything else is details.

Details with teeth, though. 

"Still so fucking pissed at you," Clint says, head half-buried in the soft pillow that smells like Phil's cologne. 

Phil pauses ever so slightly in the process of pouring them both room service coffee. He doesn't stop, but he winces, and that's all the concession Clint needs. Besides. Phil is wearing his suit pants and fuck-all else, and let's be honest. Clint is incredibly easy to distract when it comes to him. 

"And I'm still sorry," Phil says, adding precisely one-fourth of the cream jug to Clint's cup and stirring brown sugar inside without asking. Clint can't stop a stupid smile from taking over his face, because _Phil knows how he takes his coffee_.

He never said he wasn't a ridiculous sap. Sue him.

He sighs when Phil brings their coffees back to bed and puts them on the nightstand, after which he takes off his pants again and Clint's concentration promptly gets derailed. 

"Huh?" is all he can come up with when Phil looks at him expectantly; then, "Oh." He turns on his side so Phil can slip back under the covers, pushing himself to sitting with his back to the headboard, propped on his pillow. Phil hands him his coffee, then takes his, too, turning sideways so he faces Clint. He takes a fortifying sip, savouring it before giving Clint his full attention. It's so sweetly domestic that Clint spends at least thirty seconds floating in blissful contemplation of the decades to come witnessing this.

…If that's what Phil wants, too. Fuck.

"Stop thinking," Phil says calmly. "Help me get this. Please. I don't want any more misunderstandings."

Clint swallows, hiding the bottom half of his face behind his cup. He takes a deep breath. Fuck it, they've come this far.

"Okay. Hit me."

"I love you," Phil says simply, and Clint almost chokes on the coffee in his mouth. His entire face flames; it goes all the way down his neck, his chest, too. Oh, god.

"Oh my _god_ ," he says once he swallows. He sounds like he's been deepthroating gravel. 

Phil appears perfectly calm, but Clint sees his fingers twitch on his cup, and the tiny show of nerves almost undoes him.

"Is that the good kind, or not so much?" Phil asks. Clint wants to...he doesn't know. Tackle him into the bed and blow him until he begs, maybe. Wait, no maybe about it. 

"Modesty doesn't suit you," Clint informs him. His foot finds Phil's under the sheets, hooks around his ankle. He smiles at Phil, incapable of pulling up a mask when he's such a mess of emotions inside. 

"Is that so," Phil says, but he's back to his usual confident, demanding tone, and Clint gives in with good grace.

"I love you too, you bastard. Don't ever do something like this to me again."

One of Phil's hands falls away from his cup, finding Clint's in the folds of their covers.

"I'll do my best."

It's not what Clint wants to hear, but it's honest, and it's as much of a promise as Phil can give him. 

"So what happens now?" Clint asks after a while. "I mean, we're in the clear knowing about you, right? 'Cause I'm pretty sure Fury gave us his blessing a couple weeks ago, and I'm not entirely sure how to feel about that under the circumstances."

Phil's eyebrows shoot up, and he stares at Clint, so Clint tells him about his most recent flirtation with (slightly more certain than his heretofore encounters) death. When he gets to Fury's most cryptic of cryptic hints, Phil bites his lip, something very much like a giggle choking in his throat. 

"Well, that's one of my questions answered," he says. He's flushed with amusement, eyes sparkling behind his lashes. He is without a doubt the most beautiful thing Clint has ever witnessed. 

"I'm still confused as to why he decided to tell me," Clint admits.

Phil smiles. It's shy and self-effacing and Clint loves it, loves him. "I might have made a nuisance of myself. I suppose Hill was getting heartily sick of me, and she's never been shy about sharing the pain."

Clint's grin is more than a little evil, he knows. He loves it when Phil's a dick (now in more ways than one), and Phil being a dick over _him_ is... (All kinds of things are starting to sound like a double entendre now. Clint is not surprised to find he is _loving. It._ )

It dims a little when he follows the drift of the conversation to its logical conclusion.

"You're not coming back, are you," he says. It's not exactly a question. It doesn't need to be, does it.

Phil's smile fades, too. His fingers squeeze Clint's once, then start to drop; Clint has a panic-laden moment when he clings to them with something very close to terror. A second later, he watches Phil's eyes go all soft. 

"No," Phil says gently, but his fingers come back, lacing tighter through Clint's. His thumb starts stroking over Clint's scarred knuckles. "I can't come back to New York, not right now. I'll be in the air -- we're doing important work." He sounds slightly pleading, and Clint's not sure what that means for them, not yet, but he finds himself wanting to give Phil whatever he's asking for. Anything at all, really.

"Okay," he says. He won't lie and say he's...all right, not crushed, because he isn't _actually_ sixteen anymore, but...disappointed, for sure. "So...How do we do this?"

Phil smiles at him again, and it's full of all these feelings Clint has spent years trying (hoping) to find in his eyes, and now that they're here, he doesn't actually know what to do with them other than, you know, try not to explode from happiness. 

"I haven't been on this assignment for long, but I'm hoping we'll get to make pit stops every now and again. And you, you can come visit, or drop by, or...anything. Clint, I'll take anything."

"Jesus," Clint mutters, because shit like this, it doesn't happen to him. He can't have possibly found the one person who would let him do his own thing, yet will be there to call, and talk to, will be this quiet support that Clint needs more than anything in the world, will let Clint love him and love Clint back and be content with what time they steal away for each other -- and will also provide mind-numbing orgasms any chance they get. 

For Clint, life doesn't really get any more perfect than that.

"You can have anything," he tells Phil, and he doesn't even care how sappy that sounds, but he does care that it makes Phil's face crack wide open again, filled with disbelief and happiness and something that Clint doesn't dare believe is adoration. "We can--I want to make this work. We can make this work."

"We can," Phil confirms, although Clint was so, so careful not to make it into a question. He keeps looking at Clint, and Clint drinks down the rest of his coffee and drops the cup over the side of the bed, and then he's on Phil, kissing him deep and slightly messy, too enthusiastic to care, and Phil kisses him back, lets Clint slip him plenty of tongue and bear him down into the sheets, the tinkle of porcelain on carpet the only concession to Phil forgoing his usual neat freak ways. 

Of course, _of course_ , because this is Clint's _life_ , Phil's phone chooses that moment to emit a shrill ring, managing to somehow sound angry and reproachful. Phil actually groans in protest, which Clint thinks might be one of the hottest things in the history of ever, but he does stop kissing Clint (which is _awful_ ) and gets off the bed to retrieve it (even worse). 

"Go," he says into it. He sounds displeased, which is at least somewhat soothing to Clint's disgruntled dick.

Clint uses the time it takes Phil to decide on the level of urgency the call conveys to get a head start on things, because fucked it he's letting Phil out of this room again until they both come all over each other, he doesn't care what it takes. It nets him the absolutely priceless moment of Phil choking on his own spit when he looks at him mid-nod; it's fucking beautiful, and Clint is going to cherish that for a long time to come. 

Of course, then Phil rings off, throws the phone in the direction of his suit jacket, and advances on Clint with such an intent, laser-focused look on his face that Clint has to slow his fist down or come then and there.

He's lying prone on the bed, feeling deliciously well-fucked and languid when Phil finishes getting dressed and gently turns his head to kiss him goodbye. 

"I'll call," he says, which, unlike the usual pop-culture connotations, coming from Phil might as well be an iron-clad guarantee. Clint hums, kisses him back for as long as Phil allows (for the record, that's quite a bit longer than Clint expected to get).

"I'll be languishing dreadfully until you do," Clint assures him. He gets a swat on his ass for that, which sends a tingle through his softened dick anyway. 

Phil doesn't say goodbye as he slips out of the door. Strangely, it reassures Clint more than anything that this thing is the real deal, that Phil is just as serious as him about them. _Them_ ; god, is Clint ever going to get used to this?

He sleeps some more, wallowing unashamedly in their mingling scents, the smell of sex slightly diluted by the breeze coming in through the window Phil left open. When he wakes up, he feels more refreshed than he has for weeks, months, maybe. He takes a shower, packs his few things in his ratty duffel bag and points the nose of his nondescript sedan back in the direction of NYC. He's got some adjusting to do, and for once he's looking forward to it rather a lot.

\---

The day after Clint gets back to New York (well. He says the day after, but it's more like six hours from when he returns to the tower and the whole story comes out), Tony hacks into SHIELD's servers and raises the Avengers' clearance level to seven. No more, no less.

Clint only gets wind of this when Fury summons them to his office, and he and Tony spend the next thirty minutes yelling escalating threats at each other. It's as hilarious as it is terrifying. Steve, who normally exerts at least _some_ stabilising influence on Tony, merely stands there, arms crossed, "Captain America Disapproves" written all over his face. (Even Barnes thinks that shit's amazing, Clint knows just by looking at the glazed look in his eyes. …Perhaps 'amazing' isn't the right word, but Clint's still Not Going There, though he can't wait to see Phil's face when he works that one out.) The others flank Tony at various distances. It all looks remarkably pulled together, like they're making a stand. The look on Natasha's face _alone_ is at DEFCON 2; now _that's_ terror-inducing, and Clint seriously doesn't know how Fury's still standing his ground.

Tucked away in the darkest, farthest corner he can find, Clint snaps a picture of the tableau and sends it to Phil.

_"Your superheroes miss you,"_ he types to follow it. 

It doesn't take long for Phil to reply, which is merely a _D:_ face, and that? _That's_ what Clint calls 'amazing', that Phil lets himself do goofy stuff like that around him now.

_"Do you miss me?"_ follows maybe twenty seconds later, and Clint has to bite his lip not to scoff.

_"Don't be a dick,"_ he types back. 

Phil's reply is a _♥_ , followed by a picture of Ward looking constipated with Skye mid-rant in front of him, her finger almost in his face. 

_"Would rather be there than refereeing pre-schoolers,"_ Phil says.

Clint saves that, along with the previous three messages. He's already starting to suspect that his phone's current memory card is only going to be the first of many dedicated to this long-distance thing they're falling headfirst into. 

_"Could come over, help you put the fear of Phil Coulson into them."_

_"And something else of Phil Coulson's into you?"_

Fury and Stark's noses inches away from each other and Steve standing beside them with one hand on each of their chests is no setting for Clint to get a blinding, excruciating hard-on so fast his lower belly cramps with it. 

_"Low blow, sir."_

_"...Nope, too easy. But yes. Please come over. You can help me troll Ward, it's amazing how many shades his face can go."_

Clint pockets his phone, looking possibly more thrilled than he ought to under the circumstances. Barnes catches his eye from a similarly far-removed corner, giving him a knowing look. Clint shrugs, unembarrassed. Hey, he gets to have (and keep) Phil Coulson. Everything else is gravy.

"So help me God, Stark…"

"Okay," Natasha says, the first thing out of her mouth since they invaded Fury's office. The room goes quiet. It's sexy as hell, but Clint has a long history of appreciating this kind of thing while mooning over his Agent Asshole, so he's comfortable with the tug on his attention.

"Director, you know full well that Stark only changed the team's clearance level for one reason, and you have to admit that was not your best moment. So. Learn to let that slide, and you'll get us off your back. It's really not that complicated."

Natasha and Fury, there's plenty of history between them, too, but there's also a level of intense mutual respect. Fury looks at her. Natasha looks at Fury.

"Fucking--fine," Fury growls, throwing himself back in his chair and bringing a hand to his forehead like the diva he is. "You win. But I'm assigning you bunch of time bombs another handler, and you're going to act deliriously happy and take it, or I'm selling you out to the World Security Council."

"No, you're not," Natasha says calmly. "But sure. Send him over, and we'll think about it."

"'Him'?" Clint asks when they're back outside the Bat Cave, because Natasha has never been one for gender-specific pronouns around people she likes, and whatever the current shit level status, she does like Fury.

Natasha smiles. It's not exactly a friendly grin, but it's not wholesale evil, either. Clint is intrigued. 

"Sitwell," she says.

Clint starts laughing. It takes a while, as well as several whatsapp exchanges with Phil for him to stop.

You know what? Fuck it. Clint _loves_ his life.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it was unclear, the title is from Britney Spears' _...Baby One More Time_. Because Clint would approve. :D I sure hope you guys enjoyed this ridiculousness, it was so, so much fun to write.  <3


End file.
